Control
by EnglandBabe1997
Summary: Because that was what they did, she realised now, they stripped you down until you couldn't control yourself, and then they could control you.
1. Prim

She was screaming.

Everyone she loved had left her at some point – her father, for good; her mother, temporarily; and even her cat wandered off from time to time and wasn't seen for days. But now it was her sister. The one person she could always rely on to be there couldn't be.

It was _their_ fault.

She'd never hated the Capitol before. She'd certainly never liked it, but it was all she'd known. How could you hate something if you didn't know any different?

But now, now she understood the others tone of hatred when they spoke of it, in hushed tones as though it was something to be feared.

It was though, speak too loudly and something terrible could happen to you, to your family.

She hated the Capitol.

Because now she was seeing something different.

She was seeing a life without her sister, a life that could soon become reality.

And it was their fault.

So she understood when they spoke in hushed tones but she still didn't understand why they were hushed. She wanted to proclaim her hatred to the whole world – it wasn't like she had anything else to lose.

Her mother had been lost a long time, her father only slightly longer.

Her cat had always been lost – it had found her, not the other way around.

Katniss was lost now. Even if by some miracle she came back, she wouldn't be the same. Katniss, _her_ Katniss, the Katniss that sang her to sleep and teased her about her ducktail and hunted and knew pain but could still wipe it from her eyes when her little sister needed her, would be gone. The pain would stay in her eyes, even when her sister needed her.

Because that was what the Capitol did.

It stripped them down to their raw emotions – hunger and pain and fear. The emotions were overwhelming and impossible to control and made control easier – control for the Capitol.

Those emotions had to go somewhere – into the Hunger Games.

Katniss, into the Hunger Games.

Her hatred burned.

But she would not let them win.

The emotions would not overpower her.

She would not be controlled.


	2. Katniss

Katniss had seen firsthand what the Capitol was willing to do to control you. They were willing to kill, willing to destroy, for no more than their own amusement.

They found it funny.

And with people like that in charge, what did the ordinary people in the Districts have to do but wait and scurry out of their way, suppressed beneath their feet like ants beneath a boot.

Normally Katniss will not let them win. She will fight to the death to keep herself free - and isn't that ironic, considering the Hunger Games?

Her freedom isn't what she's concerned about. She's concerned about the people around her, the people close to her. Because they are the ones who will be hurt when the flames die out and the Games have ended. They will strip her down until she is nothing, until she is alone, until she has nothing left to fight for, no one else she is willing to lose. They will go after Prim and Gale and her mother and Madge, and anyone who she has ever given a kind word.

And they will die, mysteriously, in convenient accidents and everyone will know that the Capitol is to blame but no one will be able to do anything.

No one is willing to.

They have never known anything but this tyranny and they are so far under the Capitol's control that they think it's normal, that it's normal to live like this.

Katniss fully intends to show them otherwise.

But not at her family's expense.


	3. Johanna

**I realised that Johanna had a lot to lose with the Capitol, so I decided to add this as well - I'm on a bit of a Hunger Games frenzy at the minute :)**

Johanna had fire in her. She was good at pretending she didn't, at playing meek, weak and innocent, but that was how she won the Hunger Games.

No one had ever expected her to.

And that fact made her popular, particularly among the Capitol, where popular was the one thing you didn't want to be. There you wanted to be invisible, unnoticed.

But she had been noticed. And so President Snow told her to go to the men of the Capitol and do as they wanted.

She had refused.

He had asked her again.

She had gone and spat in the eye of the first man.

Snow did not give third chances, and even second were rare.

Her family died in mysterious accidents over the next five weeks. First, was her brother, in a mining accident. Three others had been killed and that time she honestly believed it had been a coincidence.

Then her two younger sisters, the roof crashing in on their home when they were inside. That was more suspicious – their house had stood for over sixty years with no signs of shaking, why now?

And lastly her mother, dead of a mysterious illness that swept through her District.

Johanna wondered how many other people had died for her defiance.

Because the Capitol didn't take no for an answer and when they tried to control you, they either succeeded or made you wish they had.


	4. Avox Girl

There are very few people willing to fight against the Capitol.

She is one of them.

She is different. Because she doesn't mean _anything_, and that makes her expendable, that means that they can do whatever they like to her and no one will ever know the difference.

They can make her a servant.

They can cut out her tongue.

They can cut off her hair.

And every foolish person who lives in the Capitol will honestly believe it is for theft, for murder, for abuse. They won't even think that it's for fighting against injustice, because _their_ Capitol is not unjust.

Why would someone want to fight against the Capitol?

But there are people that do, and she is one of the very few, and because of that she disappears and her family never sees her again.

Her tongue is cu and she works for the people she despises, never being able to tell them exactly what she thinks of them. That is the worst sort of punishment, for someone like her.

Because she is one of the few who cannot be controlled, and so the Capitol are willing to do anything to silence her, even if they have to take the knife to her throat.


End file.
